Depression is the major type of mood disorders. It is a syndrome mainly characterized in remarkable and continuous depressed mood. Depression is a commonly and frequently occurred disease endangering physical and psychological health of human, and is a primary spirit disease all over the world.
Main behaviours of depression are low-spirited, reduced interest, pessimism, retardation of thinking, lack of initiative, reproving self from crime, poor diet and sleep, worrying that they are suffering from various diseases, feeling discomfort in multiple places throughout the body, suicidal thoughts and behaviors in patients with severe symptoms.
Depression has the highest suicide rate in psychiatry. It has a high morbidity. Almost one of each five adults is patient with depression. Therefore, it is called the cold of psychiatry. At present, depression has become the second most important disease seriously burdening on people among the global diseases. It causes suffering to patients and their families and loss to the society other than other diseases. The primary cause to such situation is that the society lacks correct cognition to depression and prejudice makes the patients unwilling to receive psychiatric treatments. In China, only 5% of patients with depression receive the treatments. Many of patients can not receive timely treatments. Their conditions become deteriorated, and even there are serious consequences of suicide. In another aspect, because of lacking of related knowledges of depression, people mistake for the ones with depression symptoms as being disgruntled, and could not afford deserved comprehension and emotional support, which causes greater psychological stress to the patients and leads to further deterioration of conditions.
The increasing severity of depression trend, as well as the decline in psychological diathesis and the damage to the social function of the patients with mood disorders, has drawn widespread attention of various countries throughout the world. The demand for anti-depressant medicaments is increasing worldwide. The sales volume of such medicaments in global market annually grows at a rate of 16.2% in recent years. The control of depression and the development of anti-depressant medicaments have become one of the forefronts of research hotspots of the international pharmaceutical industry in modern times.
There are many therapeutic methods of depression, such as psychotherapy, sleep deprivation therapy, light therapy and electroconvulsive therapy and the like, but pharmacotherapy is still taken as principal method at present, simultaneously supplemented by psychotherapy. Nowadays, the major anti-depressant medicaments substantially include five categories: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), Noradrenalin and Specific Serotonin Antagonist (NaSSA), Tricyclic Anti-depressants (TCAs), Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs), and Serotonin and Noradrenalin Reuptake Inhibitor (SNARI). All of these drugs have adverse effects to different extents, such as somnolence, bluffed vision, hypertension, convulsions, hyposexuality and the like, which affects the extensive promotion thereof. Moreover, due to the limitation of the deficiencies of these drugs themselves, there are problems including narrower anti-depressant spectrum, more severe toxicities and side effects, expensive price, easy to relapse after drug withdrawal, not suitable for the recuperative treatment. Therefore, the clinical use of there drugs is significantly affected.
For example, there are anti-depressant drugs, Prozac, Seroxat, Zoloft and other serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in the domestic and foreign markets, whose mechanism of action is to ameliorate the symptoms of depression by increasing the content of serotonin component in the neurotransmitters of human bodies. All of these drugs have side effects to different extents, as proved by study, “the FuAnShuan contained in these drugs plays a role in balancing the human skills, but more often, they still can not make patients calm down”. Moreover, these anti-depressant drugs cause serious social problems and possess potential safety hazard, for example, taking Seroxat results in increased suicidal tendencies in adolescents.
Depression is a clinical syndrome, which has many inducements and is the coefficient result caused by various factors. It is often difficult to achieve satisfactory results when treating with targeting a certain single link (target) only. However traditional Chinese medicine treatments pay attention to the comprehensive diagnosis and the overall regulation of various physiological systems in order to achieve the purpose of treatment. For example, as reported in a great number of documents, the formulations of Bupleurum tenue Decoction, Pinellia ternata Decoction, and BaiJinTang were used to treat “globus hysteriocus”, “depression”, and “depressive psychosis”. Hu Sirong employed Ping Xin Wang You Decoction (magnetite, chlorite schist, Fructus aurantii immaturus, Phellodendron amurense, Pinellia ternata, Magnolia officinalis, Poria cocos mixed with powdered vermilion, ShenRou, Cinnamomum aromaticum, Folium Perillae, Acorus calamus, Zingiber officinale) to treat 470 cases of depression, 70.2% of which was recovered, 20.2% was improved, the total effective rate was 90.4%. Traditional Chinese medicine, “YiLvKang” capsules self-produced by Zhao Zhisheng were applied for the treatment of depression with better therapeutic effects in total than the control group of western medicine. Ma Yunzhi et. al., employed ShuYuTiaoShen Decoction (Bupleurum chinensis, Curcuma aromatica, Acorus calamus, Fructus aurantii immaturus, Semen persicae, Carthamus tinctorius, Semen Boitae, Polygala chinensis, calcinated fossil fragments and Concha ostreae, Salvia miltiorrhiza) to treat depression after stroke, cure rate of which was 39.06%, effectual rate was 30.40%, effective rate was 21.09%, ineffective rate was 9.45%, and the primary and concurrent symptoms were significantly improved. Japanese Ozaki Tetsuo found that XiaoJianZhong Decoction (Ramulus cinnamomi, Zingiber officinale, Paeonia lactiflora, Glycyrrhiza uralensis, Fructus Zizyphi, powdered maltose) had regulation effect to the emotions of patients with depressive neurosis. There are many clinical cases like these. However, compound Chinese herbal formulations still have the problems of effecting to be slow, nonsignificant effect, more complex components, unclear active ingredients and the like, hence the controllability of their qualities is restricted, and it is hard to use modern pharmacology to analyze their mechanisms of actions.
Recently, the studies on extracting monomer drugs with high anti-depressant activities from the traditional medicines are progressively increased, and have become the trend of the international pharmaceutical industry to develop the anti-depressant drugs. For example in Germany, hypericin extracted from Hypericum perforatum is employed for the treatment of depression. It not only has significantly effect, but also cause low side effects. Hence it falls into the scope of major anti-depressant drugs in European and American countries.
There are numerous anti-depressant studies on the monomer drugs from the traditional compound Chinese medicines and the extracts of Chinese medicines, for example:
Inventive patent application publication No. CN100509006C (authorized announcement number) discloses a pharmaceutical composition comprising Panax ginseng, Glycyrrhiza uralensis, and Fructus zizyphi, or the water extracts or ethanol extracts thereof for the treatment of depression.
Inventive patent application publication No. CN1256090C (authorized announcement number) discloses the use of Centella asiatica and the derivatives thereof for the preparation of anti-depressant medicaments.
Inventive patent application publication No. CN101385736A (publication number) discloses use of paeoniflorin in the medicaments for the prevention and treatment of depression, as well as the pharmaceutical composition thereof, said pharmaceutical composition contains an effective dose of paeoniflorin with pharmaceutically acceptable carriers, and can be prepared into a conventional liquid or solid dosage forms.
Inventive patent application publication No. 101332205A (publication number) discloses an anti-depressant drug using paeoniflorin as raw material, as well as the dosage thereof.
Albiflorin is a monoterpenoid compound, with the molecular formula of C23H28O11 and the molecular weight of 480.46. The molecular structure thereof is shown as Formula (I). It is a natural active substance derived from the roots of Paeonia lactillora Pall, Paeonia veitchii Lynch and P. suffrsticosa Andrz of Ranuculaceae plants.

Albiflorin has a lactone ring structure, and does not have hemiacetal structure. It is converted into two products, paeonilactone A and paeonilactone B, under anaerobic conditions. The structures of paeonilactone A, paeonilactone B are shown as follows:

Modern pharmacological studies indicate that Albiflorin has analgesic, sedative, anticonvulsant effects, immune system-related effects, smooth muscle-related effects, anti-inflammatory effect, effects against pathogenic microorganisms, liver protective effect. Clinically speaking, Albiflorin is mainly used for the resistance to epilepsia, analgesia, drug abuse rehabilitation, the treatment of vertigo, the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, the treatment of bacillary dysentery and enteritis, the treatment of viral hepatitis, the treatment of age-related diseases, the resistance to barium sulfate flocculation and mucus dissolution. The preparation method of Albiflorin and the use thereof in manufacturing the medicaments for the prevention and treatment of depression have not yet been reported.
According to lots of modern scientific research, the inventor employs advanced separation and purification techniques to extract the active ingredient Albiflorin from the crude drug Radix paeoniae for the treatment of depression, with making the content of Albiflorin above 50%. The inventor performs pharmacodynamically and pharmacologically anti-depressant studies on Albiflorin and corresponding formulation thereof, the results of which show that Albiflorin monomer has definite pharmacological effects, well-performed anti-depressant activity, low toxicity and side effects, high level of safety, and can be provided as a drug with high efficacy and low toxicity for the treatment of patients with depression.